landmark

Tokyo losing landmark bookstore, giant bookmark created to mark its place【Photos】

Special displays, sales, and even book fortunes commemorate Sanseido moving on to its next chapter. 

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Osaka icon loses legs, restaurant says famous crab is exhausted

After losing its giant fugu blowfish, people are now worried about the health of the city’s big crustacean. 

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Osaka loses a beloved icon as giant pufferfish disappears in the middle of the night 【Video】

A sad day for fugu blowfish everywhere. 

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Osaka’s giant pufferfish may be saved by neighboring business

A new hope for the threatened fugu.

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Centuries-old Kumamoto Castle continues to battle intense earthquakes

Two violent earthquakes and numerous strong aftershocks continue to rock the iconic 400-year-old castle, which has so far outlasted much younger structures.

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NPO lobbies to rebuild Edo Castle at the cost of 50 billion yen (US$500 million)

Naotake Odake, former managing director of the Japan Tourist Bureau (JTB) and once director of the Tokyo Convention and Visitors Bureau, spent years of his professional life traveling to cities across the globe in order to promote Tokyo as a worthwhile tourist destination. In his travels, he noticed a trait shared by all the major cities: they each had a unique and well-recognized landmark embodying the history and culture of the land. According to Odake, a structure of this sort is vital to bolstering a spirit of pride in any given population. Unfortunately for Tokyo, he believes that this sort of historical landmark is something that Japan’s capital city severely lacks. What he has against Asakusa Temple, Tokyo Tower, or Tokyo Skytree, I’m really not sure. But, it is for this reason that Odake has taken the lead as the chairman of a non-profit organization which hopes to rebuild the Edo Castle’s innermost tower. “In order to present Tokyo as a proud tourist city, we need something like Edo Castle,” he says. But will the payoff really outweigh the costs?

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